Not being of a markedly religious turn except when he was ill, it is not surprising that Louis promoted the construction of very few churches. One of them, Saint Philippe-du-Roule, replaced a leper hospital. A few years before the Madeleine was begun, a new church of Sainte Geneviève was planned as a crown for the Mont Sainte Geneviève. Great difficulties had to be overcome in providing a firm foundation, for the elevation was found to be honeycombed with the quarries of Gallo-Roman days. It was fifty years after its beginning before the adjoining abbey chapel of Sainte Geneviève, which the new building was to replace, was torn down, leaving the fine dome-crowned church--now the Pantheon--to stand uncrowded. Opposite the Pantheon to the west is the Law School, designed by the same architect, Soufflot. In public utilities Paris found herself somewhat richer than before Louis’ reign. The postal service attained such effective organization that it made three deliveries a day and was housed in a large and adequately equipped building. It became usual to number all the houses as had been done for some two hundred years on the house-laden bridges. The names of streets were cut on stone blocks and affixed to a corner building. In spite of the discomfort of getting about the large city through dirty streets carriages had been introduced but slowly into the city. As late as the sixteenth century only the king and ladies of the court used the heavy coaches which were called “chariots.” In the next century chairs carried by porters became fashionable among the extravagantly dressed and bewigged. A cab service, established midway through the hundred years won instant favor, and was greatly improved in Louis XV’s time, though Parisians were condemned for many decades longer to traverse the town through streets unprovided with sidewalks and defiantly dirty. It is hard for the admirers of twentieth century Paris cleanliness to realize that an English traveler, writing just before the French Revolution, complains bitterly of the dirt and disorder and danger of the streets and compares them most unfavorably with London thoroughfares. Another undertaking, this time of scientific interest, was the tracing of the meridian of Paris from the Observatory of the left bank across the river to Montmartre on the right of the Seine. In the left transept of the church of Saint Sulpice is a section of the line, and a small obelisk on which a ray of sunlight falls from the south at exactly noon. At the same moment the sun’s rays set off a cannon, placed where the meridian crosses the garden of the Palais Royal. That the fire service was not astonishingly competent seems to be indicated by the disasters [Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINTE GENEVIÈVE, NOW THE PANTHEON.]